Popped in Rancer

I was looking to fly a Noctis from The Forge to Minmatar space last night. Normally, I'd take the long route to avoid low sec, but I really wasn't looking to fly 20+ jumps, so I looked into the low sec route. 8 jumps. Very enticing.

 Low sec's reputation is probably a little over rated in my opinion. I've gone into low sec several times, to pick up orders and sometime to look for a fight. But I just ended up flying around the system by myself. I figured this time wouldn't be any different. Except for the ship I'd be flying. Normally, I fly cheap, agile frigates that can align and warp in under 5 seconds. This time, I'd be flying an expensive industrial ship, worth probably close to 100M ISK. So for whatever reason, I decided to scout the route I would be taking. The route was Jita-Hek. I took a quick look at the DotLan maps, since it provides ship kill statistics for the last hour and 24 hour periods. Here's what I saw.

(Blue links indicate my intended path)

That red spot on the map is Rancer. It's highlighted in red because it has a very large number of ship kills in the past 24 hours. Again, this isn't that much cause for concern. It could simply indicate that two corporations have been pounding each other all day. But, it could also mean a gate camp. And since I wasn't in the mood to lose a 100M ISK ship, I assumed it was a gate camp.

And that's exactly what it turned out to be:

Ship: http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=16836635
Pod: http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=16836636

Because I was flying half AFK, I didn't see the shot that killed me. I just looked up at my screen and saw that I was in a station back in Hek. Realizing that I had been podded, I decided to go back out, this time in my free rookie ship, to see exactly what I was dealing with. Maybe if I was actually paying attention, I'd be able to get through the gate. No such luck:

Ship: http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=16836787
Pod: http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=16836976

The gate camp was a two-person team. The primary was a Rohk (Caldari Battleship) firing large smart bombs at whatever was coming through the gate. You'd need something much bigger than a frigate or industrial ship to survive.

I decided to take the long road.